We haven't seen any news on this or much discussion in any interviews. More or less all I've heard is you can swap them out and each trade skill has 5 levels of Harvesting Tools (Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Artisan, and Expert).But I totally agree with fans the competition for nodes would be crazy - Additionally in a system like Guild Wars 2 it was pretty annoying in that by allowing players to gather everything, and awarding xp for doing so, you just had too much in your inventory and felt like you had to. I really hope its a low number so characters can feel very unqiue with their trade skills and really rely on the community of guilds, commerce and friends for items and crafting.

I for one have to agree with the gathering, as convenient as it is having nodes all to yourself KILLS the market. It means the only people buying are lazy people. Which does happen across all MMOs that is how it works but the difference is vast. In a WoW system, 10 people who are in a zone questing, only 2 of them has mining, they also compete for the nodes. A stack is mined for example. The other 8 players didn't get a thing. The 2 go and sell this on the AH and make a today profit. In GW2 all 10 questing collect a stack each and sell it on the TP, making a much smaller profit.

I thought I would love that system, evidently I do not. I am not 100% on how many tradeskills we can have but with things such as fishing mentioned I am guessing it will be 2 and mining etc counts.How about you friend ?